Mediterraneans Abandon Their Famous Diet

Even in Italy, healthy peasant fare like the fresh vegetables and fruits at this market stall in Venice isn't cheap, leading many there to abandon the famously healthy Mediterranean diet.

Marco Secchi
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Originally published on July 14, 2011 8:46 am

It's not news that Americans are getting fatter and fatter, and the same is happening in many countries around the world. What may come as a bit of a surprise is that it's even happening in Mediterranean countries, especially among young people.

Pioppi, a little seaside Italian town south of Naples, is home of the Mediterranean Diet. In fact, there's a museum here dedicated to Ancel Keys, a Minnesota physiologist who traveled to Europe during the 1940s and 1950s to study the diet of people living near the Mediterranean Sea.

Keys, who liked to eat Mediterranean-style meals, lived to be 101 years old. The problem is, in Italy generally, even here in Pioppi, the diet is being ignored.

"The Mediterranean diet is absolutely something that we are trying to pursue every day," said Dr. Angelo Pietrobelli, associate professor of pediatrics and nutrition at the University of Verona. "Unfortunately, in particular among adolescents, they try to avoid Mediterranean diet because they try to 'imitate' the U.S. diet."

Some people, of course, don't think hamburgers and sodas are a U.S. diet — they call it the "industrial global diet." Either way, the results are the same.

When Keys first came to Italy with the U.S. Army during World War II — his name is the K in the Army's emergency K-rations — he was struck by the low rate of heart disease he saw among poor people in Italy, compared to well-fed northern Europe and America. The traditional Mediterranean diet is more than just tasty — it's actually good for you.

But the Italians who gave Keys his insights into the Mediterranean diet have vanished. Italy now tips the scales as the fat man of Europe; maybe 36 percent of 12- to 16-year-olds are overweight or obese, according to Pietrobelli.

Nor is the problem confined to Italy. Spain and Greece are also abandoning the traditional Mediterranean diet and lifestyle and seeing much heavier young people.

Of course, it isn't just fast food and sodas.

"I can tell you that approximately 20 percent of subjects between 6 to 12 years of age are staying in front of the TV approximately four hours per day," Pietrobelli said.

For the first time in history, today's children are predicted to live shorter lives than their parents. And the Italian Ministry of Health is worried. Health officials say the obesity is reaching epidemic proportions, and the TV campaigns "make it easier to make healthy choices."

The rise in Italian obesity rates is remarkable: After all, the overweight kids in, say, Pioppi, are the great-grandchildren of the original Mediterranean diet subjects. That's a massive change in only three generations.

While nutritionists like Pietrobelli continue to work on fixing the problem, others are trying to understand the changes.

Zachary Nowak, a food historian who teaches at the Umbra Institute in Perugia, says the original Mediterranean diet was a diet of poverty, not of choice. Keys' original study, he points out, included research on Crete. And the researchers there asked a very interesting question: "How would you change your diet?"

"These aren't people in Crete in 1948 saying, 'Oh, yeah, I love this diet. It keeps me very healthy. It's fantastic,' " Nowak said. "They would love to add more meat if they had more money. And indeed, as soon as people have more money, they add more meat to their diet."

In Greece as a whole, people are now eating roughly four times more meat than they were in the 1950s. It's the same in Italy — and wherever incomes go up.

Much of the growth of industrial food has been dedicated to satisfying a hunger for meat, fat and sugar. Even McDonald's sounds better in Italian.

"There's no match for the huge marketing efforts and promotion of junk food, and we have to protect our children," said Walter Willet, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, and one of the researchers who helped to popularize the Mediterranean diet in the U.S. back in the early 1990s.

"Children are the object of a huge amount of research on how to seduce them to eat more of foods that are horrible for them and making them fat and giving them obesity, and we know they're going to die prematurely," he said.

But there's another big problem, too, and it's the same whether you are in the U.S. or in Italy. As Pietrobelli points out, the global industrial diet of meat, fat and sugar is cheap — whereas healthy peasant food is not.

These days, it seems, you have to be wealthier to eat like a poor Mediterranean peasant.

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

STEVE INSKEEP, Host:

Reporter Jeremy Cherfas recently visited Pioppi to try and figure out why. His first stop is a museum devoted to Keys' research.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOOR OPENING)

JEREMY CHERFAS: Keys, who ate it, lived to be 101 years old. The problem is that in Italy generally and even here in Pioppi, home of the Mediterranean diet, it's being ignored.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOOR CREAKING SHUT)

CHERFAS: When Ancel Keys first came to Italy with the U.S. Army in World War II - and his name is the K in the Army's emergency K-rations - he was struck by the how little heart disease he saw among poor people in Italy, compared to well-fed northern Europe and America. That's because the traditional Mediterranean diet is more than just tasty - it's actually good for you.

ANGELO PIETROBELLI: The Mediterranean diet is absolutely something that we are trying to pursue every day.

CHERFAS: That's Angelo Pietrobelli, a physician and an associate professor of pediatrics and of nutrition at the University of Verona.

PIETROBELLI: Unfortunately, in particular among adolescents, they try to avoid Mediterranean diet because they try to quote-unquote "imitate" the U.S. diet.

CHERFAS: Of course it isn't just fast food and sodas.

PIETROBELLI: Approximately 20 percent of subjects between six to 12 years of age are staying in front of TV approximately four hours per day.

CHERFAS: Unidentified Woman: (Foreign language spoken)

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHERFAS: Unidentified Woman: (Foreign language spoken)

CHERFAS: Zachary Nowak, a food historian who teaches at the Umbra Institute in Perugia, says the original Mediterranean diet was a diet of poverty, not of choice. Keys' original study, he points out, included research on Crete. And the researchers there asked a very interesting question.

ZACHARY NOWAK: Much of the growth of the industrial global diet has been dedicated to satisfying a hunger for meat, fat and sugar.

(SOUNDBITE OF ITALIAN MCDONALD'S COMMERCIAL)

CHERFAS: Even McDonald's sounds better in Italian. Whether you're in the U.S. or here in Italy, the problem is the same. As Angelo Pietrobelli points out, the global industrial diet of meat and sugar is cheap - whereas healthy peasant food is not.